Agile: Group Technical Review Worth It?

Every since I started practicing agile development and processes, I have lobbied for some type of group tech review before release. At the end of the sprint, the tech team (devs) get together and everyone can go over what they did, give some insight to what they did and why and everyone else can get a glimpse into the other work that was done. Tech reviews aren’t meant to beat anyone down, but they shouldn’t waste everyones time either. I think developers need to get that interaction as well as learning how to show what they did to their peers. Thoughts?

For the most part this idea of a sprintly tech review has worked well, but in others it breaks down.

Why? For one it takes time. If you are so crunched at the end of a sprint, then who has time to do a tech review? In some teams, this hasn’t been an issue, maybe it was better planning or estimating, or maybe just dumb luck, but doing the review made it into the sprint.

Maybe on some teams doing mini reviews with the group throughout the sprint instead of all at the end is the way to go. Maybe not doing any review at all.

My head is still with doing a group review at the end. I think the estimation and wrapping up at the end of a sprint probably would need to get looked at from a process perspective. What can be automated? I’m sure more than maybe you are doing now, etc.

I for one welcome new ways of doing things, but more efficient and still get the points across that need to be. Bring on the ideas – let me know your thoughts in the comments.